Moving from Premiere Pro to Resolve 15

[Rinad Amir]

Hey everyone i recently cancelled my monthly subscription from Adobe suite and moved to Davinci Resolved 15 and i must admit its day and night when it comes to colorgrading am in love ? anyways back to my noobish question

Am working with V-log l footage so 

In Premiere my workflow would be 

Adustment layer +lumitri add v-log to rec 709 official lut and start grading 

Now in Davinci ive noticed i can change my colorspace to diffrent settings thats where im abit confused can anyone direct me or tip me whats the best way to set my colorspace to work with Panasonic Log lite footage

Thanks in advance everyone.

[kye]

Welcome to the Resolve users club!  Damn, maybe that should be a real club, that's a t-shirt I might actually wear.

I've been piling all the Resolve info I could find into this thread here so have a read at your leisure..

Changing colour space in Resolve is a bit confusing - not because it's difficult to do but more because there are lots of different ways to do it.

The workflow I'd recommend for you is very similar to your existing one:

1. Node 1: Adjustment layer (if you want to change WB or whatever)
2. Node 2: Colour Space Transform OFX plugin to change from V-log to rec.709 colour and gamma
3. Node 3 onwards: grading as you normally would

The Colour Space Transform (CST) plugin isn't a LUT, it's better than that because it preserves any clipped highlights/shadows, and has some nice options for handling extremes.  More info here:

Be aware that you can change colour space in many different places, but that using the CST plugin is the most flexible and AFAIK has all the benefits of the other methods as well as the extra flexibility.

[Rinad Amir]

@kye Thank you am gona read this

And yes its good to be in new club? 

[KnightsFan]

12 hours ago, Rinad Amir said:

Now in Davinci ive noticed i can change my colorspace to diffrent settings thats where im abit confused can anyone direct me or tip me whats the best way to set my colorspace to work with Panasonic Log lite footage

Unfortunately I don't believe Resolve has V-Log L, only V-Log. I'm not sure how different it is to be honest, never worked with it myself.

Generally, using a color space transformation (CST) is the best and most accurate way to translate between color spaces. However, if you want to keep your old workflow, you can always use LUTs in Resolve the same way as in Premiere.

Whether you use a LUT or CST, you can apply it in different places. In the color tab, you can right click on a clip and set it there, or you can set it inside a node. I prefer to do it in a node, because then it is much clearer what the order of operations is. I can never keep the order of operations straight, but with nodes there's a handy graph with arrows that makes it all so simple!

With Resolve, you don't have adjustment layers, but you can add clips to Groups. Right click a clip (or clips) in the color tab and Add into a New Group. Now, you have a separate node graph for group pre-clip and group post-clip, which, as the names imply, are done before or after the clip. So you could add all your V-Log shots into a group and then add in the CST/LUT or whatever you want in the group pre-clip section, and then all those clips will start from that baseline.

(You also have a timeline node graph, which applies to everything in the timeline after all the other graphs are applied)

9 hours ago, kye said:

• Node 1: Adjustment layer (if you want to change WB or whatever)
• Node 2: Colour Space Transform OFX plugin to change from V-log to rec.709 colour and gamma
• Node 3 onwards: grading as you normally would

I've read that it's best to do white balance adjustments in linear space, so my node graph usually goes:

1. CST plugin to linear gamma (V-Log to Linear, in this case)

2. White balance

3. CST plugin from linear to Rec.709 color and gamma

4. Whatever else

[Mark Romero 2]

If ALL the footage for a project is shot in the same gamma / gamut, then you can use the Resolve Color Management under the settings page to defacto change the color space and gamma.

I don't remember the color space transform node off the top of my head, but I would also suggest that you adjust the nits from the default of 100 to something more realistic (I use 350, which is about average for LCD displays, while some iPhones have displays over 500 nits). This will help you monitor your highlights better.

If you can't adjust nits using the node method, then you could use the resolve color management in settings and apply it globally, and then for any clips that are NOT in V Log, you could apply a color transform node to those clips to have their input values as REC 709 (or whatever other gamma / gamut they were shot with).

[Rinad Amir]

@KnightsFan @Mark Romero 2

Plenty of good tips there guys thank you 

[kaylee]

welcome @Rinad Amir~!! ? 

@kye is right, we should have t-shirts... its a pretty badass club ?

i cant actually *help* you with resolve like these other folks (lol), but i did make a short film with it and i love it – no way im going back to the alternatives!

im on the adobe $9.99/mo photoshop plan!!! i feel like im beating the system!!! ?